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This is the
test that separates the men from the boys, so to speak.
The High End Disk Winmark incorporates much more strenuous
disk intensive tasks, like file transfers and data crunching
in applications such as Adobe Premier, Photoshop, SoundForge
and AVS Express.
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High
End Disk Winmark |
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A Workstation's
Workout |
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We could just
let this chart speak for itself really. There is no
explanation needed. However, we can't resist
commenting on what yet again looks like a proverbial
"smoke-show". For the single drive configurations, the
DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA drive is 26% faster than the WD
Special Edition drive and an unbelievable 82% faster than
the Barracuda V SATA drive, nearly doubling it's
performance. In addition, if you are a Movie, Audio or
Image Editing type, a RAID 0 array with a pair of DiamondMax
Plus 9 SATA drives, seems pretty much like bandwidth
nirvana. You do the math. Plain and simple,
these new Maxtor drive are racing-stripe fast.
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New
Silicon Image Drivers and Disk Winbench Results |
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What a difference
a driver makes |
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The rest of
the individual test scores for each test in the Winbench
suite, are detailed in the table below. We've also
taken the liberty of including a new set of numbers for the
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9, in a single and RAID 0
configuration, with some new SATA Controller WinXP drivers,
that were sent to us recently from
Silicon Image. These new scores are indicated with
a bracketed "2" in the title column. However, as
you'll note, we used the previous revision drivers for the
comparison charts in this review, since we didn't retest all
the drives with the new drivers and wanted to keep a fair
comparison.
Winbench Disk
Winmark Details
Click image for full view
Note: "(2)" Test Run
indicates new driver Set
The folks at
Silicon Image have been doing their homework for sure.
As you'll note in this table of scores, the overall High End
Disk Winmark performance of a RAID 0 SATA array, has gone up
another 16% or so... sweetness.
A Note On Acoustics Of The DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA
Drive:
Speaking of sweet,
we're going to keep this segment both short and sweet.
We typically test a hard drive acoustic profile in a fairly
primitive but effective none-the-less environment. We
literally place the drive down on a bare wood portion of our
test bench and then let the drive's noise characteristics
radiate through the wood. This method actually
enhances drive noise to a certain extent and gives a worst
case scenario to gauge things with. We didn't compare
the drive to every disk in our lab but the DiamondMax Plus 9
SATA drive, has quieter spindle and read head acoustics,
than either the Western Digital SE or Barracuda V drives we
tested.
Final Analysis
It should be
fairly obvious to you at this point, where this article and
performance analysis of the new DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA
drive, is culminating. It doesn't take a rocket
scientist to see that this drive is easily one of the best
performing Desktop or Workstation Hard Drives on the market
right now. Historically, Western Digital Special
Edition drives, with their 8MB buffer, have always been our
drive of choice here, amongst the HH Tech Editor team.
However, with the advent of Serial ATA and it's inevitable
succession of PATA technology, it's safe to say we have a
new favorite. The Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA
delivers on every performance metric, speed, speed,
acoustics and... speed.
There are only a
couple of small caveats with this new SATA drive from
Maxtor. Although clearly this is a high end product,
the warranty from Maxtor for this type of drive is
lack-luster. Maxtor only warranties the drive for 1
year, while many other high end desktop products, like the
WD SE drive, sport 3 year warranties. We would like to
urge Maxtor to reconsider upping the ante here.
Clearly this is a well built product, there is no reason not
to stand behind it for a longer duration. The other
small issue is that you simply can't find this drive as of
yet, in the retail channel. Maxtor should be hitting
volume with these drives in a month or so, we would expect.
As such, we don't have an MSRP for you on them either, as of
yet. However, one would expect that they should fall
closely in line with the
ATA133 version of the DiamondMax Plus 9 , somewhere
around the $95 - 125 mark for an 80G unit, like the one we
tested.
For now, we were
so impressed the DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA drive, that we're
giving it a 9 on the Heat Meter (3 years on the warranty
would have scored it near a perfect 10) and our Editor's
Choice Award for excellence.
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